Energy Focus, Inc.

First quarter 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Brett Moss at Hayden IR. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning, everyone. Joining me today on the call is James Tu, Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Todd Nestor, President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin today's call, I'd like to remind everyone that we'll make certain forward-looking statements. These statements are based upon information that represents the company's current expectations or beliefs. The results realized may differ materially from those stated. For a discussion of these risks that could affect our results, please refer to the discussion under the heading Risk Factors, as well as forward-looking statements in our most recent 10-K, in addition to the forward-looking statements in our most recently filed 10-Q with the SEC. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except required by law. Also, please note that during this call and in the company press releases, any financial, certain financial metrics are presented on both GAAP and non-GAAP adjusted basis. Reconciliations of the adjusted results to GAAP results are available on the tables attached to the earnings release, which is posted on our corporate website at energyfocus.com in the investment relations section on the site. I will now turn the call over to James.

Thank you, Brett. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. As you have seen from our earnings release this morning, during the first quarter, our Q1 2021 financial results reflect the continuing significant impact of the pandemic on the lighting retrofit market, where budgets for such projects could be pulled or postponed immediately due to capital conservation or uncertainty on occupancy. In addition to the continuing industry headwind we experienced in our commercial sector, the quarter was also impacted by the fluctuations in the timing of military orders, and government funding. The result was an approximate 30% decline in revenues compared to first quarter 2020, which predated the widespread impact of the pandemic. The lower sales balance are driving reduced operating margins and significantly increasing our cash burn as we continue to aggressively invest in our new product development efforts. That being said, of short-term operational and financial setback, our team has responded with amazing dedication, creativity, and speed to this unprecedented industry challenge caused by COVID-19 by transforming the company in many ways. First of all, over the past 12 months, we have developed exciting new line of state-of-the-art technologically advanced solutions in both our in-focus lighting control platform and UVC disinfection product portfolios, which we believe will propel our growth starting the second half of the year. These new products will not only expand our addressable markets, but also diversify our sales into the consumer markets as well as the rapidly emerging UV disinfection market. We have accelerated our efforts to weave together an encompassing distribution and partnership network that will help us take our products to the market we target, especially in light of the new products we're launching in the next few months. Specifically, we partner with Delkia, a $5 billion building service company, to provide our lighting products to their lighting retrofit project. and we signed a distribution agreement with Batteries Plus, a 700-store retail chain that focuses on power and lighting products. We also established partnerships with two new sales agencies to expand our distribution that cover territories including Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. In addition, we continue to pursue additional significant channel partners that we hope to share with you as these partnerships materialize. We believe these additional channel engagements speak volumes to the unique, innovative, and compelling offerings of our product portfolio that is drawing significant interest and endorsement from these sizable channel partners. These exciting existing and forthcoming partnerships will help us get our products to the end users, be it commercial or residential customers, in a more timely and scalable manner. Third, we've also continued to strengthen our leadership and talent teams across the board. We believe that these hard times are the best times for real talents that fit our dynamic culture to shine and to bring the company to the next phase of growth. And I'm incredibly grateful and proud of our whole team for what we have accomplished to get us ready for sustainable growth ahead. So despite of the unbelievably challenging environment we have faced over the past year, I'm as optimistic for the long-term potential for energy focus as I have ever been. And I believe the investment thesis for energy focus remains sound. In the meantime, over the past month or so, we have begun to see initial improvement in the commercial markets with an uptick in bidding and pipeline activity. Capital improvement projects which were frozen for most of the last year as people were from home, are beginning to loosen up as businesses are starting to prepare for a return to work and to a new normalcy. Our advanced lighting technology solutions, now more complete with unique products such as RECCET, in-focus lighting control systems, and the incoming UV products, could be a powerful part of the new building paradigm. In the field of UV disinfection, We just launched our pilot MOVE Crew robot disinfection service last week in Cleveland, and we look forward to reporting the progress of this pilot service in the coming months. In addition, we've also received in SILSF a response and interest in also purchasing our MOVE robot, which comes with superior performance and affordability at the same time, compared with competing disinfection robots in the marketplace. We also expect to begin shipments of our portfolio of UV-C air disinfection products, including Nouveau Tower, Nouveau Traveler, and the above troffler to customers later in the third quarter. These UV-C surface and air disinfection products constitute a comprehensive solution for both consumer and corporate markets and will enable homeowners and businesses to disinfect rooms or common areas effectively without chemicals or residues. Developed through the combination of our expertise and experience in lighting technologies, as well as additional new proprietary and patent-pending technologies from Energy Focus and our supply partners, this line of unique and powerful UVC products are designed to inactivate 99.9% or more of various pathogens, including coronavirus and influenza. And we expect the UBC product to become a meaningful contributor to our results in the second half of the year. With a gradually improving macroeconomic environment for the lighting retrofit industry from our growing commercial sales pipeline, we are cautiously optimistic that first quarter might have marked the bottom of our quarterly sales for 2021. At this point, we expect the second quarter to start improving incrementally over the first quarter with strengthening growth momentum for the second half of the year as we start delivering our UV disinfection products and our second generation in focus control systems. With that, I will turn the call to Todd to review our financial performance for the year and the quarter. Todd? Thank you, James.